The Laird's Vow

by Heather Grothaus

  “How did you…?” she began, but he cut her off.

  “I found the good-bye letter you had hidden in our chamber. Even if now I am your second choice—nay, even as a last resort—I pray that you will still consider me. You must see now that you were meant to stay with me—it can be the only explanation as to why you slept through the dawn.”

  “I haven’t closed my eyes the whole of the night, Tavish Cameron,” she scolded and gripped the front of his tunic with both fists. “I watched the sun rise. How dare you suggest that I—”

  He thwarted her outrage with his kiss, drawing her fully against him, wrapping his strong arms around her shoulders while she pulled him closer and answered his kiss with her own of equal measure.

  Tavish pulled away too soon, but he did not release her from his embrace. “You meant to miss the Stygian’s departure?”

  She looked into his eyes, and for an instant the doubt wanted to creep into her heart. “Aye. I meant to stay…with you. If it is truly me you want, and not only Roscraig.”

  He drew her against his chest again, this time cradling her head in his palm and laying his cheek against her crown. “My princess,” he murmured; then he looked down into her face. “Your father?”

  “He is awake, and asking for mead,” Glenna said with a smile. “I was going to fetch it when you tried to send me to my death.”

  “I’ll go,” he said, releasing her. “I’ll find a maid to bring it and some food. Now that I can be sure that you won’t run off while I’m not looking, I would speak with Audrey as soon as she has made her way from her covers. There is a discussion we must have that is long overdue. Certainly before her father arrives.” He touched her cheek. “You’ve made me very happy.”

  She smiled at him as he turned away and stepped quickly and lightly down into the gloom of the corridor, and then she closed the door and rested her back against it for a moment. What lightness she felt now, what hope, in this chamber that had seemed so despairing through the night. Her father was alert, seeming to have regained a portion of his health with the dawn, and while Tavish Cameron had not made a declaration of love to her, he had stood guard outside her door all the night, worried that she would leave him.

  Perhaps for him, they were one and the same.

  * * * *

  Tavish met Mam as he reached the entry corridor, her hands laden with a tray, and he leaned in to peck her cheek and squeeze her elbows in a fond embrace as she greeted him.

  “Well, this is quite a change from your foul humor of last night.”

  “I have fair reason for my lightened mood. I’ve just left Glenna; Iain Douglas is awake and asking for mead.”

  His mother’s face wore a startled expression. “He’s awake? Are you certain?”

  “Aye. A good omen, I say. I was just on my way to find a maid.”

  Harriet lifted the tray in her hands. “No need.”

  Tavish kissed her cheek again. “You’re no maid, but you are a saint, Mam. Glenna will be glad to see you.” He began backing away from her. “Audrey’s not been about, by chance?”

  Mam snorted. “At this early hour? Good heavens, if Miss Keane is out of her bed so soon after dawn, never mind your good omen, for you can be sure the world is nigh to end.”

  Tavish laughed as he turned and mounted the stairs leading up to the west tower. Not even the prospect of rousing Audrey and confirming what she’d already accused him of could dampen his good mood. He would apologize and take the berating owed him. It was Audrey, after all—they had been friends for a score of years, and she had likely suspected Tavish was in love with Glenna Douglas long before Tavish himself had.

  He paused on the steps between floors. He was in love with Glenna Douglas.

  The sound of a door opening drew his attention upward, and he saw a young maid backing carefully out of Audrey’s room with a covered tray in one hand. The woman closed the door and started down the stairs.

  “Is Miss Keane awake?” Tavish asked, resuming his climb.

  The maid gave him only the briefest, frowning glance as she passed. “She said she doesn’t yet wish to be disturbed, milord.”

  Tavish chuckled as the girl carried the obviously heavy tray awkwardly down the stairs. Apparently, Audrey had refused such an early breakfast. He came to the door and rapped softly with the backs of his knuckles, hoping not to rouse any of the other guests on the floor.

  “Audrey, it’s Tavish.” She didn’t answer, and so he knocked again, a bit louder. “Audrey?” He engaged the handle and pushed the door open a bit. “I’m coming in. Don’t throw anything at me.”

  The drapes at the windows had been opened, allowing the bright glow of morning to creep into even this west-facing room, yet the chamber was cold, the fire having gone out sometime in the night. The maid had likely been miffed at her swift ejection and not deigned to lay the demanding miss a warming blaze to help thaw her icy demeanor. The drapes about the bed were still drawn tight, and that caused Tavish’s grin to return. Everything seemed promising this morning, even this task now before him. It was the proper thing to do, and he felt no shame in it.

  Tavish cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to disturb you so early in the day, Audrey. But I wished to speak with you privately. With as many suitors as you’ve had laying siege to Roscraig, I knew this was my best opportunity.”

  He waited for the curtains to twitch, billow. But the bed behind the heavy drapes remained still.

  “Your father sent you here with the intention that the two of us should wed. I think you and I both know that that’s not in either of our best interest. You would hate living so far from Edinburgh, and you want a doting husband who will play the role of senator at your social functions. We have been friends long enough that you know I can never be that man. Perhaps it is because we know each other too well that this would never work.”

  She shouted no denials. He stepped closer, noting the elegant, silk-embroidered chamber slippers on the floor near the bed. One was on its side, revealing its plush, wooly lining. Audrey Keane’s slippers to be worn in private were finer than most people’s only pair of shoes.

  “Muir was right. You were right. Glenna Douglas has taken hold of my heart. I’m not certain when it happened exactly—perhaps you could tell me that, as well,” he said ruefully. “I’ve not done the honorable thing by any of you, and for that I am truly sorry. I hope you will forgive me my foolishness. Muir as well, if he should know me well enough to return and call me out for the arse I’ve been. You are, of course, welcome to stay on at Roscraig for the king’s court and as long after as you can tolerate it, if one of the nobles here has managed to catch your interest. If there is anything I can do to assist, you need only speak it.”

  He waited a moment in the silence. “Well. That’s the whole of it, I reckon. You may shout at me now.”

  He sighed and placed his hands on his hips, looking about the room awkwardly. He noticed a silken dressing gown tossed over a chair near the wardrobe, of the same light hue as the slippers and with matching embroidery. But the shoes were near the bed, and the gown was across the room.

  Now Tavish looked more closely and saw that the wardrobe door was partially open, and a jumble of clothing was spilling out of the bottom; brushes, combs, and colognes had been scattered on the silver tray on the table, and several other items had been knocked to the floor. The small stool that belonged to the table was on its side.

  Tavish’s gaze went back to the curtained compartment. “Audrey?” He went to the side of the bed and yanked the drapes open.

  The coverlets were completely smooth; the numerous tasseled cushions arranged just so. Tavish frowned.

  She said she doesn’t yet wish to be disturbed, milord.

  Immediately, thoughts of all Hargrave had known about the goings-on at Roscraig filled Tavish’s head. There were so many strangers about hired on as servants wi
th complete run of the hold, Tavish only knew a handful by name. Whoever that maid was, she had some explaining to do.

  He left the room with the door swinging open and started down the stairs. He paused, though, at the window between the landings, where the heavy silver tray had been shoved onto the stone sill—its lid was knocked aside, and whatever had been concealed beneath it was now missing. He continued on down the stairs, bursting into the entry corridor.

  “Where did the maid go who just came from the west tower?”

  A score of people stopped to turn and stare at him, and to Tavish’s dread, all the women servants were dressed exactly alike.

  A middle-aged woman stepped forward. “I was in the west tower this morn, laird.”

  Tavish shook his head. “Nay, it wasn’t you. Just now. She only just came down.”

  The servants’ eyes were wide.

  “Where did she go?!” Tavish demanded.

  A man behind a handcart pointed through the open door leading to the bridge. “A gel left that way a moment ago, laird. I didna know her.”

  Tavish dashed through the door, and the pounding of his boots echoed in the space under the bridge. His eyes scanned the path ahead, the narrow road twisting into the village, but he didn’t see her. He looked to the right where the trail wound up toward the cliff, but it was also empty. He stopped, his head turning this way and that, his heart hammering against his ribs.

  The maid was gone.

  And so was Audrey Keane.

  * * * *

  Glenna busied herself helping Harriet to care for her father while they waited what seemed hours for Tavish to return. Glenna had worried that there would be some awkwardness between her and Tavish’s mother after the tense words they had shared last night, but Harriet behaved as if none of it had ever happened.

  If anyone here has reason to hate me, Glenna thought to herself, it is this woman. And yet she has done little else but exhaust herself caring for people who, in all likelihood, she should have considered enemies.

  Iain was still awake, having taken some mead and even a bit of gruel, and was doing his best to vocalize answers to questions and to join in the conversation the women strove to keep animated and light as they changed bedding and freshened the laird. There was no talk of Vaughn Hargrave.

  By midday, Tavish had still not arrived, and Glenna was growing anxious.

  “I’ve a need for a bit of fresh air and to change my gown,” Glenna said in as nonchalant a manner as she could. “Do you mind terribly, Harriet?”

  “Of course not, milady,” Harriet said, tucking the corners of the blankets around the mattress. She glanced up only briefly. “I am wondering myself if Miss Keane hasna run him through.”

  Glenna felt her cheeks tingle but did not deny the idea. “I’ll have a repast sent up for us,” she said, walking to her father’s bedside and kissing his forehead. “Careful of Mistress Cameron’s honor, Da,” she warned playfully. “We can only have one scandal at a time in the family.”

  His stuttering wheeze at her jest was beyond heartening—perhaps Harriet was wrong; perhaps her father would live. Perhaps everything would be better now, even better than she dreamed last night while wishing on that moonlit path across the Forth.

  She quit the room for the lower-level chamber and quickly shed the cumbersome formal costume in favor of a slim-sleeved red silk and belted her familiar golden chain about her waist. In moments she was stepping into the wide entry corridor.

  Glenna went first to the kitchen and gave instructions for a meal to be sent to her father’s room, and during the return trip through the courtyard, she kept watch for Tavish. He was in none of the craft buildings, and so she came back to the hold. The handful of servants she questioned didn’t know his whereabouts, although the last—a heavyset washerwoman—said she thought she’d seen the laird heading up the path away from the Tower.

  Glenna stood on the threshold of the main door for a pair of moments, her eyes flicking between the eastern tower corridor and the village. She impulsively grabbed a basket from a peg near the door and set off across the bridge.

  She took the path through the center of the village, more crowded with folk than Glenna could ever recall, and though everyone seemed to know who she was, not one face was familiar to her. She kept a tight smile on her lips and answered the openly curious greetings, and by the time she found herself on the far side of the settlement at the base of the cliff path, she felt quite uneasy.

  Who were all these people? And where was Tavish?

  Glenna started up the path to the doocot, glad for the shaded quiet and the familiar rounded roof that came into view around the bend. Her slippers crunched the twigs and leaves from the chestnuts and oaks overhead, each step sending forth the smell of fresh green. She looked down as she neared the stone threshold of the doocot and stopped.

  Splotches of dull red marred the verdant forest carpet, in a line leading directly to the aviary. She gathered her skirts in one hand before following the splattered trail farther up the cliff amidst the disturbed detritus of the path, as if something had been dragged. Glenna walked back to the stone dwelling; the splotches started just before the door.

  They could only be blood.

  She looked up the path once more. Could Dubhán be injured?

  She recalled Frang Roy’s suggestion that the elimination of the monk could only be to their mutual benefit. Could the rough farmer be even now lurking in the wood, watching her?

  Could he be the reason Tavish had not returned?

  Glenna left the basket on the stone threshold and then used both hands to hold her hems from the menacing splotches as she hurried up the track. The gravestones rose up from the crest of the clearing like ancient and curious sentries from a long-forgotten dream. She weaved through the plots quickly toward the small, vined hermitage when a flash of swaying color at the cliff edge caught her eye.

  She glanced to the right, gasped, then stumbled on her feet and fell behind a wide obelisk whose markings had been scrubbed smooth by the salty air. Glenna crouched there for a moment on her hands and knees, heart pounding, telling herself that what she had seen had been nothing more than a trick of the shadows, a flash of water and tree bark through wind-tossed boughs.

  She gathered her feet beneath her and rose up slowly, cold perspiration breaking out at her hairline as she looked across the gravestones toward the firth. It was no trick of the light.

  The upper half of Frang Roy’s body was visible in the dappled shadows over the edge of the cliff, hanging from a thick, ropy vine around his neck. His face was purple-black.

  Glenna screamed.

  * * * *

  Tavish had just finished searching the last of the cottages when Alec rushed around the corner of the path.

  “Have you found her?” Tavish asked in a low voice.

  Alec shook his head. “But you’d best come quickly, laird; there’s been screams heard from the cliff. A woman’s.”

  Tavish didn’t question Alec further but broke into a run toward the snaking path. His boots flew over the gravel and ruts as his strides lengthened to climbing lunges. He heard it then himself, a woman’s sobs in the graveyard ahead.

  “Audrey!”

  He burst into the small clearing and saw her there, standing among the stones. But it wasn’t Audrey, it was Glenna—her hands covering her mouth to stifle her cries.

  And there was the dark hermit monk, Dubhán, his face pivoting, seeming unsure as to whether he should fly to Glenna’s side or to the cliff. But why…?

  “Tavish,” Glenna gasped, seeing his arrival. She pointed toward the firth, where Frang Roy hung dead from a tree.

  Tavish went to her, wrapping his arms about her and turning her away from the corpse. “Glenna, what’s happened? What are you doing here?”

  “I came to the—I was looking for you and…and I
saw blood on the path,” she breathed into his shoulder. Her body trembled against his. “I thought Frang had hurt someone. Then I saw…I saw…”

  “Shh,” Tavish said. “All right. You’re safe.”

  “I thought perhaps he had harmed you, like he said he would. He never left Roscraig. He wanted me to poison you. He said—”

  “Poison?” Tavish repeated, but then running footsteps sounded behind him, and Tavish looked over his shoulder at the man at arms.

  “Is it her, la—good lord!”

  “No, it’s not Miss Keane,” Tavish said.

  Glenna pulled away slightly. “Why would Miss K—”

  “Audrey wasn’t in her chamber this morning,” Tavish explained. “All her things are still there. I’ve searched the entire village for her. It’s as if she’s vanished from the earth.”

  “And now we find Frang Roy dead,” Glenna breathed, her green eyes wide.

  “Something else you must know, laird,” Alec said. “There’re trumpets on the road, just now.”

  “The king,” Tavish said grimly, and he felt Glenna’s hold on his tunic tighten. “I’ll take you back to your father and Mam.” He looked to Alec. “Help Dubhán cut this man down, then gather our most trusted and start searching the beaches. Have a dinghy sent ’round to this side of the point to search the rocks below. Send word to me at once if you find anything. I alone,” he emphasized. “I’ll join you as soon as I am able.”

  “Aye, laird.” The man walked toward the cliff, drawing his sword as he went.

  Dubhán’s smooth hands were pressed together before his chest, as if he had already begun praying for Frang Roy. “What would you have me do with his body, laird?”

  “Put him in the ground,” Tavish said. “He was trouble when he lived, and I cannot help but think that word of his strange death upon the king’s arrival will taint the court, on the same day Audrey has gone missing. Did you hear nothing in your cottage, Dubhán?”

  The black man shook his head, his expression grave. “Nay, laird.”